TEETH GOING-TAILS GONE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2675, 21 July 1913, Page 8

TEETH GOING-TAILS GONE.

A vivacious account of the wonderful bodily changes which have taken place in men is given in the Edinburgh Review. “People cry out, in Ch&iiibcrlflJiiite phraseologly, ‘eyes are going/ teeth are going,’ ‘hair has gone!’ If it were true it would only be a minor incident in human ©volution. Mankind are a species of bald apes; if the hair of their heads degenerates, as that of their , bodies has already done, it would seem a very natural progress of evolution. But teeth also are ‘going.’ Doubtleaa in evolving from the simian stage there has been a great diminution in size or degeneration of the jaws. Men do not have the massive and protruding jaws that characterise gorillas, nor are their teeth of the same strength. The wisdom teeth in a considerable proportion of humanity never develop at. all; and their degeneration is, in the opinion of many a valuable and desirable eventuality. It is no doubt pleasant to have eyefi which can distinguish the satellites or Jupiter, but they would be of no great service in civilised life; far more valuable is the mental vision which gradually gives us the mastery of our fate. It would occasionally be serviceable to have jaws and teeth which could crack \ a coooanut; certain pastimes would doubtless be facilitated if our sense cl smell was as acute as that of a dog; and in listening to an indistinct speaker it would be of undeniable utility if our degenerate ear-muscles still retained their former function, so that we could adjust our ears like a horse or a donkey. But the loss of these aptitudes has been attended by the gain of other more important aptitudes; so that their progressive degeneration has helped us to obtain the mastery over all animal# in which they have retained full development. “It is scarcely possible' to examine any region of the body without finding evidence that along with evolution of new structures there has gone a progressive degeneration of old structurea.% r “Claws are going,’ ‘hair is gpiag,’ ‘tails have gone,’ such might have been the refrain of a pessimistic ape-man a hundred thousand years ago. And the complaint must have seemed justified; for now was he to keep warm in winter without his furry coat; and how was he to climb about the trees if he had / no tail wherewith to swing himself among the branches?” Commenting on this article in the International Journal of Ethics,” Mr M'lver says, “We must distinguish the atrophy of no longer useful organs from the decay of the organism. You see, tails wore very useful in that primitive society. But when men had at- , tained to co-operative house-building and the use of tools, they had willed away the use, and indirectly the possession, of tails. i “There is no escape from the conclusion : “It is in the spiritual activity of society that the nature of social progress and decadence is found, there and there alone. This inevitable conclusion i® aLso one full of hope. It relieves the mind from the fatalistic doctrine, a necessary corollary of the so-cial-organism theory, that societies grow old and decay inevitably by more lapse of time, with no hope against an inexorable law. In truth, societies grow in experience, in knowledge, and in power ,as each generation hands down its gains. They do not grow in age, for each generation is new, new as was the inconceivable beginning of life indeed with an increased capacity of life in so far as past generations have striven to improve it. We can discover no law which burdens the new generations with an inherited weight of